Just found out I'll be starting in the Balfour area not so far from Jo'burg, hunting five days with Pieter Diedricks (Mabelingwane Safaris). Had thought we (wife and two daughters) would be in the Grahamstown area for five days, transferring to our second PH, Philip Dixie (Blaauwkrantz Safaris) for a second five days near Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

The pix of Mpumalanga found, including those in a recent 'Hunting Reports - Africa' thread look fabulous, but that's all I have to go on. Gemsbok and waterbuck are of interest to my wife, who'll be the hunter with Pieter.

Any feedback welcome. We leave August 08.

BNagel

BNagel,

Well, well. Sh%# happens! I do not know the outfit that you are hunting with at all, so I cannot say what the reason(s) for bringing you under the impression that you will be starting in Grahamstown, only to find out later that you will actually start near Balfour.

FWIW Balfour is just about as typical "highveldt" as you are likely to get. You should expect to get good black wildebeest and blesbuck in that area. But these are about the only two species really well adapted to the highveldt grassveld as near Balfour. There are a few hills in that district, so the species available as no-introduced animals may be a few more.

Hope you have as good a safari as you had planned to have.

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren

Sorry Andrew but I beg to differ. The area around Balfour do have some very nice hills "koppies" and there are even free ranging warthog in the area.

Warties near Balfour? Wonderful! The warties are slowly making a recovery over much of the Free State and other areas where they have been exterminated years ago!

But basically Balfour is highveldt? Yes?

Andrew

Andrew

I assumed from a conversation at Houston Safari Club convention, where our first ever PH said he had a concession in Grahamstown (near Blaauwkrantz where I'd returned from a second safari in 2005) that his hunting contract for August 2007 was for same. The idea was to do five days with him, then five with second PH.

His contract actually says Limpopo Province, where he is based out of. No longer having his former property to hunt, divorced from lady whose dad owned another property hunted there extensively until late 2005, I ASSUMED it was a matter of specifying home base in the document but hunting wherever he had arrangements with various farms all over RSA -- typical situation.

He worked so hard for us in 2001 I wanted to get it right with him as well as take the family to enjoy the Eastern Cape. My only concern has been travel arrangements, because we opted to be driven / tour (after taking a waterbuck and gemsbok for my wife) instead of flying to P.E. I had told the Blaauwkrantz PH we'd be taken to a half-way point between the two safaris where he'd get us, thinking between Grahamstown and Uitenhage, not Jo'burg and Uitenhage.

It will work out, it is my mistake and I'm clarifying details. There was no misdeed, just miscommunication / hearing what I wanted to instead of what was actually said. We are looking forward to Mpumalanga now and seeing more of a spectacular country. The kids want to pet cheetahs at a nearby farm, tour Addo, go for night drives, cheer momma on, etc.

Please bear no ill will. Hope this makes it better. Google Earth show Balfour itself largely settled with lots of farming. Don't know how far from town the property actually is. Pieter has 50,000 acres in Natal available, some new place / farm of his own back near Warmaths, and so on. It will do!

Maybe I'll even try to do a "gut" myself.

Barry

As long as you enjoy it. It does not matter where in South Africa you go.

Remeber to take lots of pictures.

Gerhard

Jakkals

Will two new 1 gig flash cards do? :-)

One more time around for our other RICOH 35 mm point-and-shoot. I use force flash and ISO 400 film, but inside picture all turn out orange. My daughter had good luck with a throw-away drugstore camera that showed ISO 800 speed film.

Guess I'll stick with what I know -- have to get rolls of film for the trip to go with the digital as back-up.

Geniet jou dag!

BNagel

Dankie,

If I can make a sugestion is stay with digital.

You can take a lot of pictures while in the field and at night in camp edit them and you will know how your pictures looks like

With the 35mm camera there is a lot that can go wrong and you will only know when you have developed the pictures.

Enjoy the trip.

Gerhard

We just returned from the Mpumalanga region and had a great time. We hunted mostly in the HighVeldt, but during our touring we saw everythign from the huge plantations of bananas, sugar cane, papaya, et cetera to the Pine Tree Farms to the mist veldt, bush veldt, and low veldt. It was fairly deverse and changed every 30 - 40 miles.

The town of Nelspruit reminds of the small german town in the Texas Hill Country and sitting at a coffee house one morning I would have thought I was in Kerrville or Fredericksburg Texas. Send me an email or respond to the post with your email and I'll answer any questions offline.